


Meaning

by misura



Category: A Knight's Tale (2001)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-15
Updated: 2010-12-15
Packaged: 2017-10-13 23:31:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/142898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misura/pseuds/misura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>"You," Wat says with every ounce of feeling he possesses, "are a fonging idiot."</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Meaning

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nonesane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nonesane/gifts).



Wat may not know a lot of fancy words, let alone how to write them down on a bit of paper, but he knows hunger when he sees it, and Chaucer is hungry _all the time_ these days. Burning with it, like, and Wat's got no fondness for the man, only enough is enough.

"If you sneak off and make Will give away all of our money again ... " he says, figuring that the threat of a good fonging is just the thing to keep Chaucer on the straight and narrow, so to speak.

Chaucer gives him this look Wat doesn't quite understand. "Yes, yes, I know." He sounds more annoyed than worried, as if the idea of Wat putting him in a world of pain doesn't bother him one little bit.

"Me, when I've got money, I eat." Wat feels like he should explain, make things clearer. He's not some sort of idiot; he's thought about this. "I give away some money, only it's all right 'cause I get something back, see?"

Chaucer looks like he's thinking of something in Italy. (They're in France.) "I believe the process you're describing is commonly refered to as 'commerce'," he says.

"Whatever." Wat doesn't particularly care what people who use fancy words call it.

"It's all the same in the end," Chaucer says. "We pay for our pleasures, knowing they will be as fleeting as love and life itself. Fruitless, all."

"Next time you've got money, you should try buying a tansy cake," Wat says. "None of this gambling and dicing and showing up naked stuff. 'cause if you do ... " He holds up his fists. They're good fists, perfect, even. Even Will hasn't got fists like Wat's.

"Yes." Chaucer sighs. "Quite."

 

Will wins another tournament - _of course_ , Will wins another tournament, only the prize is kind of lame; some fancy bird or something that shrieks like Wat's mother whenever he comes near, which is all the bloody time because he's got stuff to do with Will's armor and he's not going to let some stupid bird scare him off.

After they've sold the bird, Wat goes looking for tansy cakes - or whatever they have around here that looks edible, really; he's not that picky, soft and sweet, that's the ticket.

When he comes back Chaucer's still gone, but there's something lying on Wat's bedroll that wasn't there when he left. A man of lesser intelligence might not suspect a connection between the two, only Wat wasn't born yesterday. All he does is take the time to make sure that what's inside the paper is, indeed, a tansy cake, henceforth labeled as evidence number one, _un_ , and then Wat's off again, like a shot.

 

"I might have been about to win," Chaucer says, perhaps half an hour later, and Wat would love to give him a fonging, except that he feels all fonged out for the moment. "Probably not, though."

"You," Wat says with every ounce of feeling he possesses, "are a fonging idiot."

Chaucer turns his head, but Wat can tell he's probably smiling than maddening smile of his. He also mumbles something about the pot calling the kettle black.

"Trying to _buy_ me," Wat sputters, because that really makes him mad, for some stupid _writer_ to try and act like one bloody tansy cake will make Wat do anything he hadn't planned on doing anyway. "Like ... like a _horse_."

Chaucer looks at him and Wat wonders what he sees that makes him smile again. "A horse bought for the price of a tansy cake would not be much of a horse, I dare say."

"You saying I'm worth less than a horse?" Not that Wat cares, truly he doesn't. He'd just like to be clear on what he'll be beating Chaucer up for later.

"Each man decides his own price and worth," Chaucer says. "Some sell themselves for gold, some for glory. Some for a woman, some for land. In the end though, we are all for sale."

"Not me," Wat says.

 

Chaucer keeps buying him tansy cakes though, one every time Will wins. It's weird, is what it is, because Wat has been completely clear about not being for sale and all right, that one time, he beat up the people who might have nabbed Chaucer's clothes by way of payment in a few more minutes, but that was only because, well, he didn't like their faces, was what.

"Been a while since we saw you naked," Wat overhears Kate saying to Chaucer.

"Wat's been looking out for me," Chaucer tells her, and Wat wants to walk right over there and hit him, because Chaucer makes it fonging sound like Wat's doing it out of kindness or something, and that's not how it is at all; Wat's just looking out for _himself_. And Will, and Roland, and Kate, but definitely, emphatically not for Chaucer.

"Oh," Kate says, and it warms Wat's heart that she sounds rather surprised. "Oh. I see. The jealous type, is he?"

Chaucer chuckles. Wat wonders what's so bloody funny about what Kate said. "You have no idea."

"Well," Kate says. "By all means, do not enlighten me."

"Ah, the stories I could tell you," Chaucer says, all puffed up by now; Wat doesn't even need to see him to know that; he can picture Chaucer just perfectly in his mind.

"Well, don't."

 

Wat corners Chaucer later that day when it's just the two of them, with Kate doing her blacksmith stuff and Roland doing his priest stuff and Will doing his Will stuff. "You're just begging for a bloody fonging, you know that?"

"I don't think that word means what you seem to think it means," Chaucer says. "Other than that: yes, more or less, as anyone would have noticed by now. Well, not you, perhaps."

"What word?" Wat asks, even though it's plain as the nose on his face Chaucer's just trying to distract him.

"A 'fonging'," Chaucer says.

"I bloody well know what a fonging is." That's rich, really: Chaucer suggesting Wat wouldn't.

Chaucer looks at him in a way that makes Wat want to hit him. "You're just not interested, then?"

"Interested in _what_?" Wat asks, because Chaucer is making even less sense than usual, when he's prancing about, announcing Will like he's been everywhere and saved everyone even though everyone knows by now how Will's just an ordinary guy, even if the Prince made him a knight.

"A fong."

"Fonging," Wat corrects him automatically. "It's called a fonging."

" _You_ call it a fonging," Chaucer says. "Most people just call it sex."

" _What_?" Wat says, because really, _what_? "You think that I ... with _you_?"

"There seems to be somewhat of a lack of other interested parties," Chaucer says. "For you, I mean. I'm a writer; I'm not having any trouble in that department. It's only a matter of the right words at the right time."

"Over my dead body!" Wat says. "You think I'm going to let you get off with some ... some ... " The mere idea fills him with rage. "Forget it. I've got my eyes on you."

Chaucer has a death wish, Wat swears it. "Could be your hands instead." The man simply does not know when to shut up.

"Just take off your clothes already. And stop talking."


End file.
